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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

10 Apps for Finding Apps

With the bounty of apps available for mobile devices, it would take a full-time job to customize the best apps to suit our needs and populate our devices. Of course, there are the good ‘ol standbys like Facebook, Shazam, Twitter, Pulse, Angry Birds, (insert your favorite app here), but there are so many others that are worth the real estate on your phone — it’s just a matter of finding them.

Luckily, there are apps for helping you find apps. Thank technology for doing the work for you and saving yourself from the hours it would spend researching and hand-picking. The following 10 apps will help you find the best deals, the best within specific categories, the best for different genders, the best for moms, the best your friends like.... But what’s best about these best-of apps? They’re allfree.

Before you waste any more of your company’s time trolling through iTunes or the Android Marketplace (you know you do it), check these apps for finding apps first.

Using a voting system, AppGrooves gets to know what your app likes and dislikes are and tailors its recommendations based on tastes. If you like a particular style of app, AppGrooves uses special algorithms to also recommend those with similar features, descriptions and ones that like-minded people have downloaded. You can "star" apps that you're interested in, and also see which apps your friends like using a Facebook log-in -- assuming they use the app, too. There’s also an Essentials section that covers every category from Airlines to Texting for Free that will fill up those blank pages on your iPhone. (iOS)

Android users will benefit from BAM, an app to help organize, consolidate and select the best apps for you. In addition to listing the current top apps and top games, BAM also lets you easily manage all the apps on your device from within the interface. There’s a handy feature that you can set to alert you to the Top Apps of the Day, so you'll never be out of the loop when someone asks if you have the latest and greatest on your Droid. (Android)

Who said nothing in life is free? App Deals puts that notion to rest by making you privy to the best free apps on the market. Using Appsfire’s search engine, App Deals gives you instant access to those winners that are free for a limited-time only or on sale. You can personalize the app interface to display the "streams" that you’re most interested in, e.g. games, productivity, photo & video, etc. and immediately see what great app deals there are in each category. If there’s an app that you want to spread the news on, there’s one-click sharing capability for Facebook and Twitter. (iOS and similar Android version)

Appsmart is another useful app that helps wade through the mass of apps out there. There are two sections that list apps, either by Category (Entertainment, Utility, Music, etc.) or by Need (Find Stuff Around Me, Stay in Touch with People, Help Me Get Stuff Done at Home). You can view recommendations by others and see how they rank among other Appsmart users. Appsmart also provides daily app recommendations and push notifications for price drops. (iOS)

There’s nothing worse than paying for an app, only to find it a big, fat disappointment. Avoid feeling duped and check out App AllStars to see the hottest trending apps on the market. The apps featured are ones that are consistently high-rankers and the most popular over an extended period of time. App AllStars also calculates biggest gainers and losers and lets you see the Top Free, Top Paid and Top Grossing apps in a variety of categories. (iOS)

While this app doesn’t make recommendations for you, it allows you to share your favorites with your Android-toting friends. Have a new game obsession that you’ve got to hook you friend onto? Simple use Share Apps to send them an email or text message about the app, complete with a link to the app’s page in the Android Marketplace. And make sure your friends download the app as well, so they can share their latest app craze with you. (Android)

You’ll appreciate this app for the fusion of social networking/app recommendation engine it is. By matching your tastes with that of others via Facebook, email, the Appreciate network, you’ll get personalized recommendations for the best apps and games for your liking. There are daily app picks that you can download and share, making this a more social app-sharing experience. (Android)

Rather than sorting through the plethora of productivity, utility, financial, etc. apps while you’re on standby at O’Hare, Apps for Execs makes it easier for the businessperson on the go to quickly find relevant picks. Categorized into areas such as Featured Apps, World News, Financial, Productivity and more, Apps for Execs relies on already-recommended apps for its listings to ensure that positively-ranked selections are included. (iOS)

Parents who have scoured the thousands of ABC apps out there and still have no idea which one to buy should check out Moms With Apps for specific kids’ app recommendations. With a number of helpful categories including Art, Environment, Foreign Language, Math, Reading, Special Needs and more, app-confused parents can read through thorough app descriptions and age recommendations to make their choices. Within the categories, it would be nice to see the app pricing be more prominent and ranked by rating rather than alphabetically, but since the apps are hand-picked, you can be pretty sure you’re not wasting your money. (iOS)

Pretty self-explanatory, these apps are targeted for each of the genders. Made by the same developer, these apps follow the identical layout and offer similar categories such as Storybooks, Games, Music — and then more gender-specific ones like Fashion & Style for Girls and Action Packed for Boys. While some of the recommended games are the same between the apps, there are also divergent recommendations for each that are very gender-specific, e.g. car-racing apps for boys and fashion/nail polish apps for girls. Girls like racing cars, too. (iOS)